


There's No Going Back

by Catchclaw



Series: Destiel Smut Brigade Summer Challenge Fic Dump [12]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Domestic Fluff, First Time, M/M, Semi-Public Sex, Summer Vacation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-04
Updated: 2015-07-04
Packaged: 2018-04-07 13:52:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4265652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catchclaw/pseuds/Catchclaw
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some of the things you find on vacation are hard to bring home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	There's No Going Back

**Author's Note:**

> My prompt was "vacation."

There are photographs, two of them, in Dean Smith's dresser drawer.

Nobody takes photos anymore, not really. They only snap the digital kind.

"But Polaroids," Cas had said, "for all their archaic nature, they give you something to hold on to."

Two Polaroids, then, that rest on top of Dean's socks. That stare up at him every morning when he reaches for a fresh pair.

The first is of Cas, bare-chested and open-mouthed on the beach. He's pointing at something the camera can't see, gesturing with a longneck in his hand, his mouth caught around words that Dean can't exactly remember. But Cas is looking right at the camera, at Dean, giving up his trickiest, most beautiful smile, the one that never failed to catch Dean unawares. Behind him, in the picture, the sky and sea bleed into each other, a body of sullen gray that frames Cas' face and lights up his eyes.

That's the photo that Dean leaves on top. 

The second, the one he hides underneath, that's of them. He and Cas. He's not sure who took it--Risa, maybe? Or Meg--and he can't for the life of him remember exactly where they were when it was snapped. It sort of looks like the deck behind Cas' house; then again, it could be the one at Dean's rental. Wherever it was, though, whoever took the shot, the image is he and Cas. To a T.

In the photo, Cas has his hip to the railing. He's turned to his side, facing Dean, Dean who's dressed in the button-down that was his uniform that summer. His pleated shorts. His loafers. His tan. They're staring at each other, intense even with the casual curve of Cas' spine, the soft expression that Dean doesn't recognize on his own face. Cas is wearing an old undershirt, faded and full of holes. Denim shorts that may once have been jeans. His feet are out of the picture, so it's a toss up as to whether he's wearing shoes. Dean likes to think that he isn't. They're not touching, in this photo, but they might as well be; there's an intimacy in their body language that says they've spent a lot of time touching, before. And probably will be again, just after the camera's lens moves on.

There is so much of that summer in this image that it hurts Dean, most days, to look. 

So he keeps it under the photo of Cas. Somehow, it's easier to see Cas out of context, caught alone in split-second of grace, than it is to see himself at Cas' side and feel that absence, that ache.

It's been two months now, god, almost three. Feels like forever and yesterday.

He'd been on vacation when they met, his first since he joined Sandover. He hadn't wanted to go. But his boss had insisted.

"It's use it or lose it here, Dean," Adler had said, fake jovial over skim soy lattes at lunch. "And I can't let my best guy, the best sales manager in the region, right? Lose all that paid leave."

"I appreciate that, sir, I do. But I don't need to--"

"Nonsense!" Adler had boomed. "You do! Besides"--he'd pitched over, rocking the cafe table to within an inch of its life--"it's bad for morale, our execs not making the most of their vacation time. Our employees want to see their higher ups happy, yes?"

"Yes," Dean had repeated, because it was easier than arguing. You couldn't win with Adler; the whole sales department knew that. Hell, the whole tenth floor. Once he started shoving you in a certain direction, you had two choices: go with the flow or be crushed. So. Dean had taken his five weeks.

It was his sister who'd suggested the Outer Banks, and Trip Advisor who'd recommended Currituck. He rented a house right on the water, about a five-minute walk from downtown: the one bar, a health food store, a post office, a Walgreens. He had no idea what to pack, what to take, and so ended up filling most of his carry-on with work stuff. Clean underwear, a few button-downs, and Excel sheets, that's what Dean had taken to the beach.

A half a day in the house, though, and he knew he'd made a terrible mistake. Because it was quiet. Seagulls, the ocean, and him. That was it.

He sat hard at the kitchen table and put his head in his hands and thought: I need a drink.

He managed to wait until dark to walk up the road to Shanty's. The parking lot was full, which surprised him. The clientele did, too. There were a handful of tourists in _Brew Thru_ shirts, sure, but a hell of a lot more locals. At least, Dean assumed they were since they clumped together in the two biggest booths and hollered at almost everybody who came in the door.

He stuck himself at the bar and ordered a scotch. Too many calories, he thought, watching the bartender reach for the Dewers, but a lot fewer than beer.

He'd barely gotten two sips in before Cas popped up, borne on a cloud of incense, it smelled like.

"Hi," he said, warm and loud over the jukebox. "You're new, aren't you?" He didn't wait for a response. Stuck out his hand instead. "I'm Cas. Welcome to Currituck."

Dean shook his hand, perfunctory, like it was part of a negotiation. "Dean Smith."

Cas grinned and took the stool next to him. Didn't ask. Just sat. "What are you drinking, Dean Smith?"

"Scotch."

"Scotch," Cas repeated, looking highly amused. "Well. Of course you are." He waggled his fingers at the bartender. "Another round, please, good Chuck."

People did not buy Dean drinks. Ever. In part because he never went to bars, but even when he did, Dean'd perfected the _don't fuck with me_ affect, the bow of the shoulders that said _leave me the hell alone_. He'd thought so, anyway. But this guy--Cas--hadn't gotten the message. And now that he was here, hovering at Dean's side, bouncing along to the Allman Brothers, Dean wasn't sure that was a bad thing.

"Can I ask you something?"

Dean looked over. Cas was practically beaming. "What?"

"Would you like to come over and sit with me and my friends?" He nodded at the crowded booth in the back. "I know they look like semi-degenerates, and they are, but they're the most merry kind, I assure you."

"I--why?"

Cas blinked over his wine glass. "Why what?"

"Why do you want me to sit with you?" Dean was blushing, he could feel it, the red up his cheeks in a rush. "You don't know me."

Cas threw back his head and laughed. "Exactly!" he said. "We understand each other, at last." He tipped over on the stool and put his face right in Dean's. "I don't know you. But I want to."

"Oh," Dean said. "Oh. Ok."

That night, Dean let himself be led. 

First to the table, where he met a dozen people whose names he promptly forgot because Cas' hand was on his knee. Then to the alley, the one tucked between the bar and the abandoned hardware store, where Cas wound his arms around Dean's neck and kissed him like it was a luxury, like Dean's mouth was champagne and Cas' tongue was a strawberry. 

"Oh," Cas said, his voice rich and sweet in Dean's ear as Dean drew him out, stroked his cock under the streetlight. "Dean. Where have you been all my life?"

And at last to Cas' bed, a mattress on the floor of a sunroom in a house two shakes from the bar. Cas put Dean on his back and teased him, jacked him right to the edge and backed off, once and again until Dean lost it. Sat up and flipped them over and put his mouth all over Cas' beautiful cock. And when Cas came, when he gave it up in the moonlight, he said, "Yes. Yes, Dean. Yes," and there was no going back after that.

They found a routine that summer, one that spun around the beach and the bed and the bar. Cas' friends liked him, accepted him into their motley fold without question. Some Dean liked better than others. Chuck, the bar owner, for instance. He was cool. And he dug Charlie, a woman with the dirtiest mouth Dean had ever heard. But even the ones that were chilly to him, like Meg, didn't give him a hard time. Nobody needled him, tried to draw him out of his shell. Nobody tried to make him talk about himself if he didn't want to. Nobody pushed him but Cas. And then only in the best ways.

Cas made him dinner, big bowls of pasta and salad and shrimp that Dean would never have gone near in Cleveland. Cas let him sleep naked, let him have the last popsicle, let him use all the hot water if he wanted. Cas took him to bonfires on the beach and let him try pot and turned the application of sunscreen into some sort of erotic art.

"Just look at it this way," Cas hummed as Dean fucked his fist, frantic. "You'll never get freckles on your dick. Not on my watch." 

And Cas took him to dark houses whose owners they didn't know, to big bedrooms or basements with pillows everywhere, soft blankets. Cas let him sit in the shadows and watch skin against skin, watch Cas swim through the arms of women and men, beautiful, stoned. Watched Cas fuck, get fucked, sigh between bodies as he came back to himself, as he smiled at Dean across the room and said, yes. Yes. 

He let Dean drag him home, after. Let Dean throw him on the bed and come all over his face, his mouth, every part of him that other people had touched. Then Cas would kiss him, long and slow and forever, and fall asleep in Dean's arms.

In the morning, there'd be breakfast and coffee and a sunrise that ate up the whole sky.

And then there was Io.

One afternoon, Dean got back from the market to find Cas stretched out on the deck, his body comma curved around something Dean couldn't see.

"Cas?" Dean said, peering out the screen door. "You ok?"

Cas unfurled like a fan and sat up to reveal a small furry thing camped out on a towel. "Found her at the gas station," he said, sad. "I think somebody dumped her. Maybe she was hit with a firecracker or something? I don't know."

Dean slipped out and knelt down, let Cas wrap his arms around Dean's waist. "Hey," he said to the furry thing--a little cat, he saw now. "Hi."

He reached out with two fingers, slow. Slow slow. The cat was a mess, fur matted and filthy. It was swimming in fleas. One of its ears was nicked, like it'd lost a fight. 

"It's a girl," Cas said against Dean's shoulder. "I don't know what to call her."

The cat watched Dean's fingers, wary, but she let him touch her head. Let him rub his thumb under her chin. "You got any idea how to wash a cat, Cas?"

"Yes," Cas said. "Very carefully."

They cleaned her up and fed her and named her Iolanthe, at Cas' insistence.

"Gilbert and Sullivan," Cas said, haughty. "Look it up, heathen."

"Io," Dean said, as she poked her head out from under the bed. "Ok, honey? You're Io for short."

The cat didn't seem to care what they called her, as long as they let her sleep on the counters and drool all over Cas' pillow.

"It's the THC," Cas said one night, his hand still twisted in Dean's hair. "It's like industrial-grade catnip for her."

Dean snorted. Nipped Cas' inner thigh and sat up, stretching. "Right. Sure it is. That's why they sell pot at Petsmart, genius?"

Cas laughed, that deep rolling one he always gave up after sex. "Million dollar idea there, Mr. Smith. You should get on that."

Dean leaned down. Brushed his lips over Cas' cheek. "Hilarious."

"Mmmm," Cas said, reaching for him. Pulling Dean into the sheets. "Yes."

* *

Maybe Dean should have known it wouldn't last, the strange domesticity he and Cas spun together. Strange only because Dean'd never known anything like it in his real life. He wondered if Cas had. He was afraid to ask.

Or maybe he did know. Maybe it was his own paranoia, his monastic commitment to being unhappy, that ensured Dean's vacation would come to an end.

"Come home with me," he said.

He was leaving in a few days. They hadn't talked about it. Dean didn't want to think about it. But the last days of July were marching towards him on the _Currituck Courier_ calendar and there wasn't much he could do about that. Except.

Cas looked up from his canvas, from the landscape he was painting on the kitchen table. "What?"

"Come home with me," Dean repeated, setting the last glass in the dish rack. "I'm leaving next week."

"I know."

"So. I'm saying. You should go with me."

Cas' face shifted, waves of uneasy. "You mean Cleveland?"

"Yeah," Dean said. "Exactly."

"This is my home, Dean. I can't just leave."

Dean's blood went cold, cold cold and certain. "Why not?"

Cas stared at him. "Because I don't want to." He scowled. "I'm not a stray, ok? I'm not some lost creature looking for a handout or a warm bed."

"Did I say that? Did I say you were a goddamn stray?" Dean threw up his hands. "Jesus. What the hell."

Cas slammed his brush on the table and shot up. Knocked over his painting. "You think your life there is better than here, is that it?" He laughed, slick and bitter. "You think we're all hicks down here or something? You think whatever you have, whoever you are up there is superior to this, huh?"

"I didn't say that! Stop putting fucking words in my mouth!" Dean caught his breath. Tried to. "I want you in my life, Cas. Is that so hard to understand?"

"So come here," Cas said, soft. "Move here, Dean. Don't ask me to give up everything to follow you someplace where I know for a fact that you're miserable."

Dean got a flash of it, his life back there--his office, his four-quarters apartment, his sterile, safe life. Where would Cas fit there? He wouldn't. He couldn't. But Dean couldn't see himself here, either, on Currituck. There were no jobs, no sales managers needed. No meetings, no lattes. No expense reports or Xerox machines. How could he stay here? He wouldn't fit. Would he? He couldn't.

"Cas," he said, or started to, but Cas stopped him. Two fingers on his lips. Hush.

"Don't," Cas said. "Please. I don't want to hear you say it." He dipped his head. Kissed Dean over his fingers. "And I'm not going to say it, either." He smiled, small and sad. "I want you to be happy, Dean. I hope one day you'll want that for yourself, too."

And he does, Dean thinks now, cupping the two Polaroids in his palm. That's why he's kept these two photos, as much as they hurt. To remember what it looks like, what it feels like. Being happy. So he might find that feeling again someday.

It's been two months now. School has started again. In the morning, the streets are crowded with rowdy kids and yellow buses. The trees in the park are thinking about changing. Soon the wind off the water will turn sharp and cold.

Soon, Dean thinks absent, he should get back to the job search. Soon.

Leaving Sandover had been easy. Finding another corporate ship to lash himself to, less so. 

He kept finding himself sitting in interviews, answering and listening in turn, when he'd catch a glimpse of the water, the lake beyond the edge of the city, and he'd hear the ocean for a moment. The murmur of Cas' voice as he talked Io through a recipe. The hot blush of Cas' mouth over his stomach, the glare of those blue blue eyes in the dark. All that in an instant, and Dean would think: this isn't a good fit. And he'd stop trying. He'd tune out and get through the formalities and walk out knowing they wouldn't call him back, this marketing firm or the other. They never did.

He'd thought about leaving Ohio, sure he had. But his vacation was over. He'd seen to that. Whatever idyll he and Cas had built was long gone. Going back to Currituck would be like visiting a graveyard, a monument to what had been. He didn't want to remember it that way. He wanted to remember the Cas in the picture, inebriated and gorgeous and flush on Dean's affection. He wanted to remember himself that way, too. It was the best of him, of them, in those photographs, and no matter how many times Dean looked at them, their best never faded. In those photos, he and Cas would always be happy.

He tucks the Polaroids back in the drawer and stretches. Look around for Io.

"Hey," he calls, ducking into the hallway. "Io. Where'd you go, girl? Don't you want supper?"

There are two knocks at Dean Smith's front door.

Io's there, pawing at the doorknob and mewing. Dean opens it. Steps back.

"Hi," Cas says, scrubbing a hand through his hair. The fluorescent lights crown his head like a unruly halo. "Dean. Hello."

Dean reaches for him, pulls him in. "Hi," he says into Cas' ear. "Missed you. God, I missed you so much, baby."

Cas chuckles. Rubs his tears against Dean's cheek. "Well. It's nice to be home."

**Author's Note:**

> Currituck is a real place, though sadly not as small and isolated as I've made it sound. Nor, to my knowledge, is it a hotbed of orgies. Though I suppose one never knows.


End file.
